In the four leading European nations of the age—­Italy, despite her high rank in art, still lacked national unity—­four sovereigns of marked though widely diverse character and attainments reigned for a considerable part of Shakespeare’s life.  Of the “Virgin Queen” we scarcely need to write.  The England of her day, and of later days, would not have been what it was and what it became, without the aid of her mingled shrewdness and prudence.  Faults she had and shortcomings, but, granted the almost overpowering difficulties she had to face, both at home and abroad, it is doubtful whether a more decided, a more straight-forward policy would have been as successful as the somewhat devious one she pursued.  Her chief rival, Philip II (1556-1598), as much averse as Elizabeth herself to energetic action, even more fond of procrastination, lacked her relative religious and political tolerance, and left Spain weaker than he had found it.  And still his tenacity, his devotion to the cause he believed to be that of heaven, his consistency, and even the gloomy seriousness of his life, testify to a strong soul, though a thoroughly unlovable one.

The reign of the eccentric Rudolph II, Emperor of Germany (1576-1612), whose imperial residence was at Prague, covers the greater part of Shakespeare’s life.  In spite of many failings and mistakes, this monarch did much to foster the study of the arts and sciences of his age, so far as he was able to understand them.  That he was for a time the dupe of adventurers and alchemists, such as the half-visionary John Dee and the altogether unscrupulous Edward Kelley, was no unusual experience in those days, when the dividing line between true science and charlatanism was too indistinctly marked to be easily discernible.

The greatest of all the sovereigns of Shakespeare’s time was Henry IV of France, unquestionably the greatest of French kings, despite the fact that the primacy has often been accorded to the Roi Soleil, Louis XIV.  The powerful and ductile personality that was able to put an end to the destructive religious wars of France and to lay a firm foundation for the strongly-centralized power of a later time, a foundation which the great statesman Richelieu broadened and deepened, deserves all the credit that should be given to those who conquer the first apparently insurmountable difficulties in the realization of a great aim.

How brief was the reign of most of the popes of this time is shown by the fact that no less than ten of them were at one time or other Shakespeare’s contemporaries, although the duration of his life was but fifty-two years.  Of these probably the most noteworthy was Gregory XIII (1572-1585), in whose reign occurred the fearful Massacre of St. Bartholomew, August 24, 1572, and the reform of the calendar from that known as the Julian to the new style named the Gregorian Calendar in honor of this pope.